The area leading to my garage is large concrete slabs, probably ~50y old, not the greatest shape, with many cuts (from when an addition was built) and cracks, but it's not in the budget to remove/replace any time soon.

I'm trying to understand what product(s) I'll need to address:

1. gaps between concrete slabs and between the asphalt which makes up the driveway and the concrete slabs (ranging from 1/4" to 3/4")




2. cracks in the concrete slabs (mostly ~1/4")




3. the big gap between the concrete blocks and the garage apron. about 1-2" down is soil. I expect to use some sort of backing on the soil then ____(?)



As you can see the concrete is in very poor shape overall. I believe this is due to 50 years of Canadian winters, general neglect and, abuse of ice-melting salt.

Any advice is appreciated.

 

thinking of using this for some of the deeper cracks.

 

OK, lets be blunt, you have a bunch of old, what did you say 50 year old concrete, you really got your monies worth, time to remove and replace and quit thinking about band aids to restore something that has outlived it's usefulness!

 

Hey Marq,

Fair enough but you assume I've owned the property for longer than a year.. I've got a lot of work to do any need to prioritize. Currently turning the property into a triplex so dont want to throw money around.

I'll be removing the poured concrete in the pics above and addressing some leaking in the foundation. But I plan to keep the slabs (whose depth is measured in feet not inches). At least the 2 slabs that are in front of the garage. (there's 4 in total)

So the question remains:

If i dont want to spend tens of thousands of dollars right now:

How do i address cracks:
- between slab and asphalt
- between slab and slab
- between slab and apron

Recommendations welcome.

also adding a google satellite view Marq. The red circle is whats pictured, it's only a fraction of the lot. The property is almost all concrete/aspalt so I def want to pull some up. It's a tight squeeze for equipment as well but it's going to happen some day so I do agree with your point...

 

Then just let it be, anything you put down is less than a band aid and not going to do much of anything so just let it go till time to replace!

 

Hey Marq.

Wanted to catch you up on some things!

I did decide to remove one of the slabs. If you've seen any of my other threads, I recently buried a downspout and fed it to a retaining wall. The slab that was removed allowed the downspout to be buried


There was an unbelievable amount of concrete. It was poured on a slope. So while the edge I could see (near the house) was about 4" thick, it got to about 10"+ think on the opposite end of the slab. This pic is near the middle. Also, there was some rebar chucked in randomly.



The main reason for doing this was the concrete that was poured (after the slabs) and sat against the house. Due to poor workmanship (ie. didn't tamp the soil frequently enough), the soil settled, the concrete sank, and it pulled down the plastic vapor barrier. A bit of moisture was apparent in the basement. When I pulled up this poured concrete I found a cavity about the 2x size of a basketball where the yellow circle is. It definitely didn't help that the downspout was originally directed here (yellow arrow)


So my partial solution is as follows:
- kept the 2 remaining original slabs (I believe they will never be removed)
- removed all poorly poured (sunken and cracked) concrete
- redid waterproofing in the area where new concrete was being poured (you can see it ends at the window well, for now)
- properly poured new concrete, anchored to the foundation and the existing slab & reinforced with rebar (back) and mesh (side) with a nice slope away from the house



I think this is the right balance of cost and return on investment.

All the best!

 

You should be putting control joints in that before it cracks on its own. Its going to want to crack exactly at the outside corner, on the thin side, and the long wide side should have a joint in the middle if that section is more than 1.5:1.

 

Good eye XSleeper.

The pics are a bit old, took a while to find the time to post again.

Once everything dried, I basically cut 4 straight lines, making 5 squares/rectangles. Hard to see with the snow now, but here's a quick pic from inside: